


(these doors lock) from the outside too

by accrues



Category: My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Psychiatric Ward, Gen, Mental Health Issues, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 18:52:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6532078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/accrues/pseuds/accrues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vignette from a psychiatric ward AU. Gerard has PTSD from 9/11.</p><p>
  <i>His dissociation isn’t unfamiliar, it’s a friend, holding away those thoughts and feelings, everything that drapes itself over him like an ugly winter sweater. He shakes his head slowly and takes a woozy step toward the jug of water he knows is just past the nurse’s station.</i>
</p><p>
  <i>He drinks - he’s gone.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	(these doors lock) from the outside too

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS: allusions to 9/11, description of dissociation and PTSD-vivid nightmares, mentions of self harm, descriptions of psychiatric wards.
> 
> Four years ago I decided I didn't want to publish anything I wrote anymore and focus on other things (ie. celebrating other people's work through podfic). This was written around then, when I was in psychiatric hospital. Yep, I basically just projected into fic.
> 
> Last weekend I visited Jiksa who lives in another state from me, and she encouraged me to publish at least something from my Google Docs stash, so here it is.
> 
> Thanks to Jiksa, akamine_chan and shinygreenwords for the cheerleading. It takes a village to overcome my anxiety apparently.

> They have him on the good stuff. No holds barred here, he’s in again and he’s taking a runup by falling from the starting blocks (and then the gun fires and-)

  


-and he’s standing in the hospital corridor in his pajama pants, hot pink and black under the white of his cotton tee, staring at the wall and wondering how he got there.

His dissociation isn’t unfamiliar, it’s a friend, holding away those thoughts and feelings, everything that drapes itself over him like an ugly winter sweater. He shakes his head slowly and takes a woozy step toward the jug of water he knows is just past the nurse’s station.

He drinks - he’s gone.

> Under the water there are marvelous things. Mikey, not looking frustrated and sad like he does so much these days, but stoic and glam in tight black jeans and a long grey sweatshirt that covers the back of his hands, long fingers touching at a bass guitar. Gerard is-
> 
> it’s very black. Painted, gloss over chapped lips that are bleeding (not quite enough, too _late_ ). Two fingers up like a two-fingered salute (to the French, string an arrow and fire) fall at the crash of a plane and fire that falls like ash.
> 
> Mikey is hiding under the bed again (flicker- no) on the bed, ankles kicked over each other and stretched out “did you-”
> 
> “Yes,” Gerard says. “I saw.”
> 
> He did.

  
The day room is filled with shadows and soft shuffles that make him nervous. He jumps whenever a person steps toward him - he can walk to them, step step step no problem, but they come close and people are unpredictable and-

He sits in the very back corner where they never have chairs (they told him once to push his safety limits and he yelled and yelled) and draws.

There are vampires that don’t look like anything from comics or film. They’re too long, like Jack Skellington, but with tattoos that wind up their arms and twist about their neck in words and waves. The face is a face, no skull or burning eyes or fangs. The vampires smile pleasant smiles and hold flowers but Gerard knows what they are. 

\- “Gerard.”

He screams. Not for long, he can bring it back, these days, but his heart is racing and his head is pounding with the rush of blood and why-

The nurse just holds out a hand and Gerard gives over his own so that the pulse reader can record his score. 

“Sit tight,” she tells him, because she can’t take a reading while he’s heightened like this, and he breathes and she smiles but he doesn’t care because he’s staring at the vampires.

“Have you shown Brian these?”

Gerard lifts his eyes from the paper to her face and shakes his head.

“They’re great,” she enthuses. “It’s good that you’re drawing, Gerard.”

He nods dumbly and she leaves.

The dreams come marching one by one, and he finds the vampires there.

> They come after him at in the daytime, and he hides in the night. It’s a tried and tested escape method, sneak to the black and never look back.
> 
> He huddles in the corner of the basement and peers at the shaft of light and the way the dust flickers and dies in it like bugs being electrocuted. He shudders and the doorknob rattles.
> 
> They descend the staircase slowly and elegantly like a debutante at her ball, canes flicking out in a half-circle before they swing back, a metronome. 
> 
> They’re coming for him.
> 
> They drink his blood and leave him in the sun with a stake at his side.
> 
> Mikey comes by just before dark and the hand Gerard twists out is papery and worn and then the sun slips past the horizon and it’s gone.

  
He wakes up because the movement had ended behind his eyes and all he can feel is the hot sun baking his stripped body and sucking dust up like evaporating water.

The ward is quiet, tick-tock of the clocks and soft chatter from the nurse’s station, and he drinks from the water he keeps by his bed. 

His cell phone is silently waiting for him to check it, patiently displaying the message from Mikey that tells Gerard that their parents are fighting again.

Gerard turns the phone off and goes for a walk.

Of course the linoleum is cool under his bare feet, but he likes the sound the skin makes on contact, a slap-pull noise that is comforting and rhythmic.

He hits the dayroom and it’s empty and quiet.

His cigarettes are in his top drawer, he should have grabbed them, but Lindsey at the nurse’s station will give him one if he pleads. He stares at the dark shadows in the dayroom that could be vampires but are more likely the lumps that make up the card table and couches.

Lindsey only resists his puppy eyes for five minutes. She tells Ray she’s going out with Gerard and Gerard snickers behind his hand.

There are so many stars. They sit in the lot under the hospital and look up. The stars stare back, but Gerard doesn’t mind their stares as much, they don’t look like they’re judging, they just look like they’re quietly observing.

A small hunched figure joins them, dropping to sit on the curb like the other two dirty smokers.

“Bum one?” he asks, then coughs desperately into his heavily tattooed forearm.

“You... don’t sound like you should,” Lindsey hazards, and the guy gestures in a way Gerard is sure is meant to be expressive but just comes out deranged. He would know.

Lindsey sighs and passes the packet over because she always does.

They sit in silence and drag on their cigarettes. Gerard likes looking at the sky through the film his smoke makes, like the lights are synthetic, fabricated. 

“Thanks,” the guy says, and stands. “I should go back before they notice I’ve escaped.”

Lindsey tuts, and Gerard doesn’t say anything.

Five minutes later he realises he could have mentioned that he’s escaped from the psychiatric ward, so he doubts the guy needs to worry. 

He seemed nice.

Gerard has been in the moment for longer than half an hour

 

They sit against the window and Gerard presses his nose to it like a puppy begging for a walk. 

He tells Lindsey about the dream. She takes his hand and rubs the pad of her thumb up and down the back of his wrist.

“Oh, but don’t you know,” she says with a smirk, “vampires will never hurt you - it’s the werewolves you want to look out for.”

“Werewolves,” he says slowly, and looks at her. 

“Gerard,” she says gently, “is there something bothering you?”

He turns back to the window. “No.”

His breath leaves a dirty mark that spreads then contracts until it’s gone for good.

> It’s a two-way mirror. He looks in and Gerard looks back, but he moves differently. He has red hair and only light rings around his eyes. He’s looking at Gerard with his eyebrows creased in concern and a hand that twitches like it wants to reach out.
> 
> Weirdly, there’s another mirror to the side but it doesn’t catch any of the others in its reflection. Again, there’s Gerard, hair clipped short this time, shorter than he’s ever had it, and bleached white. This Gerard is worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth, the way Gerard always does when he’s nervous, especially when he’s waiting in line for pills at night. 
> 
> They shake their head at once, and he doesn’t know why but he’s reaching out to stroke at their faces, desperate. Somehow, some _how_ , he had missed the third mirror, this one with a tired but happy looking Gerard with hair peppered lightly with grey. He looks older than the others, a little age-worn, face creased a little, like freshly made bed-sheets.
> 
> He stares. The older Gerard opens his mouth briefly then jumps a little and turns to the side, and his whole face is completely lit up the way it had in photographs when he and Mikey had been kids, but hasn’t since.
> 
> Gerard _wants_ , wants with such urgency that it physically hurts. ‘Ce n’est pas possible,’ he whispers to himself.

  
And then, predictably, he wakes up.

They’re announcing breakfast. He rolls over and shuts his eyes, even though he knows what’s coming, ten minutes of lying in the dark in the misery and longing, and then a cheerful voice flicking on the hospital lights and opening the curtains like his goddamn mother or something, telling him to get out of bed.

> This time he dreams of nothing but black while he floats terrified, looking for Mikey and stretching his arms out, flailing, and Mikey’s voice calls-
> 
> He wakes up at the door to his own room eyes wide and scared, nurses at his side and he almost starts crying as they soothe him and tell him it was just a dream, it was just a dream.

  
The wall is blank, with a white that is so reminiscent of nothingness that it itself becomes something so tangible and describable that the consequence should be laughable. Gerard’s fingers twitch on the blanket, feel the quixotic roughness of the soft cotton blanket - impossible and yet - and his stomach jolts.

He’s here. Is he?

It’s not- his head involuntarily spasms on the pillow and he looks up at the ceiling. Here.

Wanting so badly to not be, but when he’s not, he is. That doesn’t make sense and it’s so true and real that he wants to scratch at his skin until it bleeds, until the layers bunch beneath his skin and the flesh runs-

he could press call.

Call.

For help?

Like the others? The others need help. Gerard is fine, he’s here. He’s in the moment, isn’t he?

Or is that what it is, that he’s not. There’s a bubble of panic in his sternum now. It’s almost real- what do you do? Oh, think. Think, breathe, let it run to the point of origin and salve it, put a loving hand there and press.

He breathes. His eyes have fluttered closed at some point and now he’s far more acutely aware of the cold that has set in on his feet, the cocooned warmth now of his chest wrapped in hospital blankets and cotton pajamas. He’s wrapped his arms around in a knot like he can hold himself together from the whirlwind tearing him apart. It’s warm. He’s safe.

His feet are cold. He hitches his pajama pants down until they pool at his ankles then kicks until they cover his feet. They’re barely by his thighs but he’s warm, encased and safe. Cheek cool on the pillow now, and... sleep.


End file.
